The lean production concept has become popular in America industries after publish the book “Machine That Changed The World” being published by Womack in 1991. That book helps the reader to understand the data and motivation behind the lean movement. However, the book does not go into detail on the lean implementation process. This limitation has been covered by another publication from Womack and Jones in 1996 with the title “Lean Thinking”. This book shows how to create an industrial world in which workers share the challenges and satisfactions of the business.
The concept of lean production is a process of value creation. It begins from defining value for a specific product or service, to creating the value through value stream, eliminating or minimizing the interruption along the value stream, pulling value and finally pursuing perfection. The value was sustained by the characteristic lean culture, such as
- Team – based work organization with multi – skilled workers who are capable of taking high degree of responsibility for work within their areas;
- Active shop floor problem – solving and continuous improvement,
- Maintaining low inventory, quality management by prevention rather than detection,
- High commitment human resource policies which encourage a sense of shared destiny within a factory,
- Maintain smaller supplier group and share or exchange of business information with suppliers,
- Encouraging of cross – functional development teams
- Retailing and distribution channels which provide close links to the customer and permit a make – to – order strategy to operate.
Many researchers have shown that company that adopted lean production system reported significant improvement in overall productivity that lead to enhanced company financial performance. The case study carried out by Michael A. Lewis (2000) shows that, the companies under his study have shown significant in operation improvement after transforming from conventional batch production system to lean production system.
